Coal seam gas is becoming a widely used energy source, particularly in eastern Australia where a number of basins have been found to produce significant volumes of methane gas from coal seams.

Coal seam gas is cleaner than other fossil fuels and already accounts for over 40 per cent of Queensland’s natural gas consumption.

Many of the high-methane production zones are confined to regions of microbial gas generation.

Research shows that microbial activity enhances the gas saturation levels of the coal, with areas in the Sydney Basin of Eastern Australia showing considerably higher production rates of coal seam gas in coal which contains secondary biogenic gas compared to areas containing only thermogenic gas.

What CSIRO did

The CSIRO project brings together the capabilities of CSIRO’s Earth Science and Resource Engineering and Food and Nutritional Sciences divisions to investigate where methane gas production can be enhanced by augmenting and stimulating natural microbial activity.

Researchers are conducting laboratory experiments to understand the processes involved and are culturing the microbes to determine the viability of using them to optimise gas generation.

The process of biogenic gas formation requires the collective actions of a variety of anaerobic microbes comprising a range of metabolic groups, and other conditions such as: